With its chipped green paint and down-at-heel panelling, the entrance to Mambo Priestess Miriam Chamani's New Orleans temple looks nothing short of innocuous.

But in New Orleans, nothing is quite what it seems - and Ms Chamani, 67, is certainly no ordinary pensioner.

For within her simple looking temple, 200-year-old voodoo rituals are still performed, bringing devotees from all over the world to her door.

Ancient traditions: Surrounded by artefacts and gifts, 67-year-old Mambo Priestess Miriam Chamani conducts a ritual in the back-room of the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple, where voodoo rites dating back to their West African origins are rigorously preserved

But, as Ms Chamani explains, voodoo isn't quite as black as it's painted and she's at pains to point out that dark rituals and animal sacrifice play no part in her repertoire.

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Instead, the entrance to the temple boasts a welcoming assortment of carvings, masques, beads while copies of the Bibles fill a small back room, heavy with the scent of incense and candle wax.

‘The unseen will always have a way to come to the light,’ she explains, gesturing towards her collection of curios – some of them gifts to the voodoo deities.

‘If you don’t try and bring it yourself it has a way to press towards you. A lot of things in this room are like that.’

Welcome: The temple - backdrop for many of her rituals - is filled with statues, masks and framed pictures, but there is little evidence of the clichés commonly associated with voodoo practice

'I never question why people leave it': Dollar bills, gifts to the voodoo deities, are scattered across every surface, while others are rolled like handmade cigarettes

There’s also money – and plenty of it; crisp dollar bills layer every flat surface, while some are rolled like home-made cigarettes and pushed between the carved lips of mounted African masks.

‘I would have taken it out but it’s done so uniquely,’ she remarks with a wry smile. ‘I never question why people leave it.

Chillingly, she adds: 'Death has a way to accumulate here. There’s a story for everything in this room.’

Nevertheless, easing herself into a chair, she’s keen to dispel the myths and clichés commonly associated with voodoo.

‘It’s funny that someone would walk around playing the fantasy game of voodoo practitioner, dressed like a made up mannequin,’ she says with a laugh.

‘People say “Well in Africa they wore white,” but it’s simple – in those days women didn’t have much clothing to choose from.’

To illustrate her point, she shows off a flowing gown decorated with a vibrant blue and burnt orange coral pattern, balanced with splotches of black.

But while the wardrobe has clearly changed, voodoo traditions remain true to their 18th century origins.

‘They would not have said they were having a voodoo ritual,' says Ms Chamani of the early voodoo practitioners.

'Rather, they were using their early knowledge attained in Africa; their wisdom, their wits. They were using every principle and insight they had to survive. They were using the principles of knowledge they had learned over many years.

‘That knowledge lasts a long time when you are in dire conditions. You can’t scream for someone to take you to hospital because there is no hospital. The hospital is at your feet – the bush.’

Offerings: The Voodoo Spiritual Temple is a veritable treasure trove of seemingly disparate items. According to Priestess Miriam ‘The unseen will always have a way to come to the light. If you don’t try and bring it yourself it has a way to press towards you. A lot of things in this room are like that’

Born Mary Robin Adams in Bible belt Jackson, Mississippi, Ms Chamani says her first mystical experience took place at the age of 15, prompted by a fierce rainstorm that swept across her rural homestead while her mother was at church.

‘It was like something was hitting on the windows,’ she recalls. ‘I told my younger sister to form a circle with me and I cried “Oh Lord let your Angels come down!”

‘That was my first ceremony, and all of a sudden it stopped. A child’s prayer is worth all the weight of gold in Heaven. God hears a child quickly.’

Moves to New York and then Chicago would follow, where work as an operating theatre nurse was combined with a dual role as an ordained bishop at the Angel Angel All Nations Spiritual Church.

Coy: Elusive about her practices, Princess Miriam says she often helps people who are ‘ at the bottom of their own will. You give them some prayer, you give them their mojo back, you give them something they can feel'

It was here, she says, that she met late husband Oswan, with whom she would move south to Louisiana in 1990, founding the Temple shortly before his death in 1995.

‘We came to New Orleans with six dollars in our pocket.’ she recalls. ‘We had the voodoo museum at Jermaine Street and then in March ’94, we moved to this place.

'In ’95 on March 6 he passed. We did his funeral right here in this room with his casket. When we received his death certificate, it said 8:28 in the morning was his passing and this store here is 8-28 North Rampart, and that door opened in April the next month after he passed. Death doesn’t surprise you, it rises.’

The temple has since been predominantly used for spiritual purposes but while she remains coy about the rituals conducted in her back room, she admits they are often sought by those in dire physical and emotional straits.

Imposing: The carved sculpture of a West African doctor, the rim of his hat layered with dollar bills, is one of many icons on show in the Temple

‘There are some people who are at the bottom of their own will,’ she says. ‘You give them some prayer, you give them their mojo back, you give them something they can feel.

‘Every time you are angry or depressed you put a dark cloud on your organs and they begin to deteriorate.

'When people get better acquainted with their own bodies they can have resolve with them, and make them less of a problem than they come to be.

‘Life does not promise to give you a better deal. You just keep shining on the surface because that’s what people like.’

Others come to Ms Chamani for comparatively superficial reasons. ’They can’t take failure,’ she says with a shrug.

‘They’re so enchanted. Sometimes people aren’t thinking about emotional wellbeing. They’re looking for a quick fix so they don’t have to think about very much.

'There are some people who just want you to push a button so this character they’re so fixated with will just materialise.

Offerings: Piles of money layer various surfaces (L) while bottles, cups and cans of foodstuff join an array of beads, statues and assorted items on the back-room floor (R)

‘You need to have courage and insight to apply practices to yourself instead of finding things to glue onto you, because glue comes apart,' she continues.

'I like to talk like this because experiences bring you here, and if you have no experience you’re just going to believe in hearsay. I believe the divine energy brought me here.’

While many seek spiritual well-being through prayer to the voodoo deities, the room also serves as a place of celebration – and remembrance.

‘Visitors come here from all over the world and they want to come and see what they have heard,' she says. 'There are so many different ways that this room is used or presented to people.

Colourful: Priestess Miriam dispelled some of the misconceptions related to her practice, amongst them the common belief that voodoo practitioners 'always wear white robes'

‘I don’t just deal with human crisis – that would be boring. I do weddings in this room, I do funerals. There’s a lot of shields on my shoulder. ‘

For now Ms Chamani is looking ahead to 2015, when she celebrates the 33rd anniversary of her ordination as a spiritual bishop – and the US return of a certain British drama.

‘Downton Abbey! I can't wait for January. And Foyle’s War? I love mysteries! Agatha Christie, you can always bring me some of her. My favourite is the Canterbury Tales. I love literature.

‘I like to let people know I’ve been somewhere in my head before they find me.’

American Horror Story: Coven is out now on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Welcome: The New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple is located on the city's North Rampart Street, close to the bustling French Quarter

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As Halloween looms, a real life voodoo priestess opens the doors of her New Orleans temple